Meghan FitzGerald, PE Investor; Author “Ascending Davos,” Healthcare Policy Prof., Columbia University, joins On The Move to discuss how the coronavirus is challenging the healthcare system.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: You're watching Yahoo Finance Live. I'm Julie Hyman. Well, as part of the proposed stimulus bill, there has been $130 billion earmarked to help hospitals, which are obviously on the frontlines of this crisis. For perspective on that, we're joined by Meghan FitzGerald. She started in her career as a nurse. Now she's a private equity investor, author of "Ascending Davos," and also, a health care policy professor at Columbia University. She also happens to be on the board of Tenet Healthcare, among others. So obviously, Meghan, deep experience within the health care industry. So when you look at a proposed number like $130 billion, is that going to be adequate for the hospital industry, especially at a time when they are losing some of their income streams as they cancel elective surgeries?

MEGHAN FITZGERALD: Hi, Julie. No, I don't think it's going to be enough. I think the crisis is causing severe economic challenges for hospitals, especially those who treat a high number of Medicare, Medicaid, and the uninsured, which they were doing before the crisis. So they're experiencing revenue decline, cash flow is being depressed, and expenses are going up. I mean, this is the worst time for expenses to go up, whether it's supplies, testing, part time workers, bringing nurses out of retirement. Our health care workforce is under dire, dire straits right now. So I think the path to economic recovery is through the hospital system. So if it's 10% or 20% of the stimulus package, this is a good use of funds right now, because we need the US to be healthy before we think about getting them back to work.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Meghan, I'm curious, though, because it's such a mess, the hospital system. Look at Cuyahoga County in Northeast Ohio. You've got the Cleveland Clinic, a private not-for-profit. You've got the Cuyahoga County Hospital system, which is county-funded. Are we going to see after this crisis, the business models for funding hospitals nationwide get federalized or changed drastically? Or will we go back to business as usual?

MEGHAN FITZGERALD: I don't know. But right now, we need to consider all hospitals the same, whether they're not-for-profit, profit. And especially the rural hospitals. Half the rural hospitals are running in the red and many of them are saying that they're down to two weeks of cash. The hospitals have about a million beds nationwide. That's only 2.8 beds per person. Most of them are used. And 11 million Americans reside in counties that have no hospitals. And out of the 11 million, that's 2.7 million of them that are seniors, the very population we're most worried about.

So how we run post-crisis will be a great case study. But right now, all 6,000 hospitals need funding, they need supplies. And they're counting on us to run interference.

MELODY HAHM: Hey, Meg, I want to be self aware here. As we're discussing these potential solutions, all of us on this call have friends, family members who are working in these very hospitals, right? And you yourself, you made that pivot-- "Ascending Davos," going from health care into the boardroom. Talk to us about the burnout that we've already been experiencing way before this pandemic, and how we anticipate the future of the medical industry to look like from a pipeline perspective.

MEGHAN FITZGERALD: Gosh, it's such a great question. My friends are telling me, especially in New York, right-- so we have half the cases in the US are really New York. So if you're in a New York emergency room not right now, it feels a little bit like "MASH." And many of them are acting like MacGyver. They're making bandannas from masks. A lot of the equipment you wear is really hot and you're wearing it for 12 and 13 hours.

Many of my friends are looking for childcare. They're looking for pet care. They're looking for respite when they get home. I mean, this is a workforce that did not go into this for the money. They went into this because they want to make a difference. So I'm really worried about burnout, because no one's going to say, yeah, I'm going to go home or I'm going to take a day off. Calling in sick is very, very difficult unless, of course, you truly are sick or have a fever.

So what we saw in Italy is a lot of the health care workers were vectors for the disease. And they were the first to really be at risk, especially if they don't have the right equipment. So I'm very, very worried about what this means going forward for the US workforce. It is clearly the scarcest and most important resource we have right now in the United States.

So I think we need to do whatever it is they need on the front to make them safe, make them effective, and also, help support-- get some of the care out of the hospital into the home. Mobile units, telehealth, anything we can do. Everyone talks about flattening the curve. I mean, even if we could just bend the curve a little bit, it means less stream of severe cases coming into a workforce that is already working so hard.

JULIE HYMAN: Meghan, this kind of goes back to Adam's question, but just quickly, what do you think is the one thing that needs to change or improve for the health care system coming out of this/

MEGHAN FITZGERALD: So I think we do need to talk about access, right? So we have a lot of people that are uninsured, a lot of people that have different levels of coverage. And also, this is not-- you know, we often don't run in excess of ventilators and emergency equipment. So I think we need to take a really good, hard look at pandemic preparedness going forward. That would be the advice that I would have.

I shared with you how many beds we have per 1,000 people. And actually, Italy has more beds than we do. So I think we headed into this crisis not really putting the value on the US hospital system. And now, we're desperate to rely on them. So I think what's going to change is a look at how we prepare for things like this going forward.

JULIE HYMAN: Hopefully, that value will be abundantly clear after this. Thank you so much, Meghan. Meghan Fitzgerald is a private equity investor, author of "Ascending Davos," and health care policy professor at Columbia University. Thank you so much, Meghan. Appreciate it.